A Parachute in the Lime Tree

by Annemarie Neary

  The sergeant tucked his thumb in his belt and seemed lost in contemplation. ‘There’ll be people looking for him, you realise that, Miss Hennessy.’ The sergeant nodded earnestly to himself. ‘Not to mention our own desperadoes.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Surely you know, Miss, there’s men in this country still think England’s difficulty and that …’

  ‘IRA men?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘I thought you’d them all locked up already.’

  ‘There’s always one or two slips through the net.’ He looked sharply at her. ‘If you come across anything out of the ordinary you’re to get in touch right away, like a good girl. Any strange movements in and around the farm; anybody you don’t recognise in the vicinity, same thing goes.’

  She might have sighed a little because he seemed to think he had worried her after all.

  ‘Don’t you fret now, Miss. We’ll track him down. The last one over this way, we had him the same day. He’d some class of an attaché case with him that he dropped on the way down. When the lads picked him up, he was in a ditch still looking for his change of clothes. Turned out he hadn’t a word of English. I mean to say, Miss Hennessy, what class of an eejit do they think we are?’

  The sergeant had hardly left when Mother emerged from the kitchen, already dressed for bed in her flannelette nightdress. When she’d gone upstairs, Kitty went over to the back door and fiddled with the bolts, top and bottom. The door seemed to have swollen since the last time she’d bothered to bolt it. She tried to kick it flush with the frame but it wouldn’t budge, so in the end she let it be. She lit a candle that night for a bit of company. What on Earth did you look out for in a German, she wondered. Years ago, Uncle Malachy had brought back a picture book about the last war from his commercial travels up North. She got it down and had a flick through it until she came across a fierce man with blond hair leaping over the mouth of a trench, about to bayonet a cluster of cowering men on the other side. She pulled the eiderdown up around her neck, swallowing dryly as she ran her finger down the delicate little grooves in her throat.

  As she lay there, holding her breath, night sounds began to emerge from the camouflage of day: creaks from the staircase, a dull thud some way down the corridor. From the room next door, she could hear the shallow ripple of her Mother’s snore, and on the quarter hour the insistent whirr and clang of the Viennese wall clock Father had brought back from the Alps the time he went for his lungs. All the while, she was aware of the unlocked kitchen door, like a hole in a sock. Eventually, she put on her slippers and walked down the stairs. She brought the candle with her, even though Mother had always told her not to be walking around the house with a candle in her hand. ‘It’s not like we don’t have the electricity, for the love of Mike.’

  Cupping her hand around the flame, she fancied she cut a romantic enough figure in her white nightgown. She walked slowly down the stairs, exaggerating her tread in the hope of forewarning any living thing that might be on the move. The candle flame flicked random shadows across ceiling and walls as she listened at the door of each of the ground floor rooms. She wondered should she try to barricade the back door, slide the old chest across it maybe. She sat on the stairs for a couple of minutes and thought about it, but then she decided the fellow was likely well gone, and went back to bed.

  She lay awake and wondered what Father would have done if he was still alive and in the whole of his health. Then she realised that she no longer had any idea what Father would have done about anything. What an end it was for him, laid up for months on end, coughing up bloody gobbets into a jar, then out like a light. She had just left the room to refill his glass of water and when she returned he was gone. She must have screamed, for the next thing she remembered was Mother hobbling in, one heel snapped from its sole in her hurry, a handful of withered blooms in her hand. And so the dying of him smelt of damp earth and spit and geraniums.

  The funeral was on an edgy summer’s day; not quite secure in its sunshine, not wholly irreverent when it came to the Hennessys’ trouble. Now and then, a cloud scuffed at the sun as they lowered him into the ground. Desmond was head of the family now, Mother said, and Kitty resented his easy assumption of the role. Aunt Effie sat in the pew behind them, resplendent in her purple silk, thick black feathers lying sleek over the top of her head. She sang along loudly in her cracked soprano until Mother had enough. ‘For the love of God, Effie,’ she hissed at her, ‘would you ever shut up.’

  After the funeral, the rest of summer spun like a dial. Autumn too, until winter settled in on them. They felt the loss of him even more in the winter when they were inside all the time, listening to the clocks he used to wind. At night, Mother took to throwing a handful of his tobacco onto the open fire to give the place, she said, ‘a touch of Frank again.’ One day, Kitty moved his chair out into the hallway, she was that sick of looking up from a book or a piece of darning and finding it there in front of her. The next morning, she felt guilty for being impatient with his shadow and moved it back in again.

  Nine months on, Kitty still wondered where her life in Dublin had gone. She read and re-read Rita’s letters, full of gossip and dances and the latest style, while Mother went to bed early with hot milk and bile beans. Now though, with this parachute business, maybe things were on the turn.

  Man Trap

  The day opened with a flurry and the yard was full of men in uniform; they crouched at corners, levelling sights, covering ground. She heard Mother answer the door to Sergeant McCreesh.

  ‘Just taking a few LDF boys to check the ditches and that … Ah, no bother on me, thanks be to God. Yourself? … Great stuff … Ah no, I’ll be off now, Mrs Hennessy. Thanks all the same.’

  It was only while Kitty was clearing away the kitchen things that she realised something was not right. The bread bin, open wide like a tinker’s hand. And the scullery soap, covered in scum. She closed her eyes to try and catch a change in the air, the way you might stand on a hill and catch thunder. She started at a knock on the door. It was Sergeant McCreesh again.

  She shook her head. ‘No sign.’

  ‘No matter. We’ll find him soon enough. Between the sea and the bog, he’ll not go far.’

  As he shut the door, she could hear the men hopping up into the truck and the flaps being slid in place.

  That morning, word came that her brother, Desmond, would be down for the weekend with Bobby Coyle, a pal of his from Surgeons. Bobby had the gas adapter fitted to his motorcar and they planned to test out the contraption by making the long trip to Dunkerin. They had a tent and billycans and all the rest, for fear the motor wouldn’t make it.

  Kitty rode down to the village for supplies and Dr Russell saluted her as he passed in the opposite direction on his sturdy bicycle, his little black bag snug as a pet in the front basket. Dr Russell would be Desmond’s competition in the medical business, if Des ever managed to get himself qualified. ‘Dr Russell’s well in,’ Mother never tired of reminding him. ‘Well in.’

  A heavy vehicle shuddered towards her on the next corner and she had to move her bicycle in off the road and climb up onto the verge. The lorry was full of LDF volunteers in their thin green uniforms and as she turned to watch them go, a fellow in the back waved out at her. She watched him say something to the others that had them creasing themselves laughing. She didn’t know any of them, and wished they’d go back to wherever they came from and not be clogging up the roads.

  She got back on her bicycle. Standing on the pedals to get herself started again, she set off across the expanse of bog that splayed out like a dark damp stain at the foot of Knockree. The earth was scored from turf cutting. There were little brown tepees of peat, and clumps of heather sprouted next to pools of water. Not much of a hiding place. She felt sorry for anyone who hoped to lie low out there. Later that day, Sergeant McCreesh was back, and the parachute was cut down and sent off for examination up in Dublin.

  The boys arrived after Kitty had g
one to bed and she heard them rattling around downstairs until all hours. At breakfast, she served them warm curranty scones with the last jar of strawberry jam, while the man on the wireless gave news of devastation in London. Five hundred machines coming in continuous waves, bombing anything going: shops, hotels, even hospitals, and street after street of houses. Kitty tried not to think of things that fell from the sky. She sat in silence, peeling carrots, as Desmond dealt to Bobby and himself from a pack of cards. Mother switched off the wireless and went off to her geraniums, and gloom seemed to settle on them all. Eventually, she suggested they take a walk and give Mother some peace and quiet, not that Mother was worried, and her in the parlour nodding over The White Feather.

  They spent the afternoon skirting the edge of the bog below Knockree. Bobby had short legs and had to move fast to keep up. Kitty was mad for news from Dublin, and even though she knew she was driving Desmond round the bend with all her questions, she couldn’t stop herself.

  ‘Bobby’s your man if you want the inside track,’ said Desmond. ‘He’s part-time with the LDF now.’

  Bobby was out of breath from running, his face shining and his little arms working furiously to propel himself along. ‘Friday last I was in Nesbitt’s,’ he said, ‘Met a fellow there, some class of a civil servant, says the German Legation is full of spies. The powers that be are worried sick but sure what can they do? They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Whatever they do they’ll offend somebody so they’re doing feck all, as per usual. From what that fellow said, I’d be worried enough about this parachute lark.’

  She was wondering when they’d get to the parachute.

  ‘That was a strange thing,’ said Desmond. ‘Sean mentioned it, right enough. Apparently half the village is out looking for him. It’s the most exciting thing to have happened in many’s the long day. Fame at last, Kitty.’

  ‘You can mock away,’ said Bobby, ‘but if the Germans had their way, they’d take over the place and good luck to the rest of us. There’s a few German fellows in the National Museum,’ he broke into a trot now to keep up with the Hennessys. ‘Word is they get up to no good in some hotel down in Wicklow. Uniforms and salutes and God knows what.’

  ‘Still and all,’ said Desmond, ‘you could worry yourself sick, too. Next thing, you’d be paranoid.’

  They walked on a bit in silence. Kitty kept hearing it: paranoid, a real medical word. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re stuck in the back of beyond; you start thinking you’re the centre of things and everything’s aimed at you. Maybe that’s why she kept seeing traces of the German all over the place: in the kitchen, the pantry, the scullery. Even that old bucket she’d not noticed before, over by the waterbutt.

  ‘One thing’s for sure,’ said Bobby. ‘If the Germans come over here, they’ll rule the roost. They’ll put some fella with a sour puss on him in charge and the rest of us will be put to work milking cows.’

  Kitty began to wish she had been a bit quicker off the mark when it came to the parachute.

  ‘Did Sergeant McCreesh have nothing to say?’ asked Desmond.

  She shook her head and wished they’d change the subject.

  ‘No advice about bolting the outhouses? Nothing like that?’

  They hadn’t been the least bit worried about the parachute to start with but now it was like it was the be all and end all. She thought about those poor people in London, blown to kingdom come. Not to mention the ones just up the road in Belfast. Desmond had told her about the long line of people he’d seen at Amiens Street Station: people come South away from the bombs. Poor, pasty-faced people with fright in their eyes. Mary Ryan in the post office had relatives in the North. She’d heard tell of some poor woman who’d just stepped into her bath when the bombing began and who’d been tossed, bath and all, through the roof of the house to land naked and dead in the street. Then there was the big noise in the fire brigade who hid under his desk and wouldn’t come out. The poor man had suffered a nervous collapse, they said.

  ‘Kitty?’

  She looked up and realised she hadn’t answered him.

  ‘Ah, he just said the man’d be well gone. The G2 men will be taking care of it from now on.’

  That night, they sat on after dinner. The boys drank whiskey and Kitty had a sweet sherry. Mother sat up for a while, too, and produced package after package of handkerchiefs for Bobby. The only time they had visitors now was when Desmond had friends for the weekend. Each visitor would head back to Dublin with a parcel containing something bought in Kilcoyne for Father and never opened.

  It must have been one in the morning when, flushed with whiskey, Desmond and Bobby decided they should set a trap for the German.

  ‘You know the Fox Gogarty is about,’ said Kitty.

  ‘Sure what about him? I’ve no fear of the Fox,’ said Desmond. ‘Anyway, we’ll not need to venture far. I’d say the German is still within shouting distance.’

  Bobby nodded vigorously. ‘If he’s any sense, Kitty, he’d not wander far from you.’

  She glared at him for that and he fell silent, examining the toe of his shoe.

  ‘A man trap’s what we need, Bobby,’ said Desmond, ‘I’ll get Sean onto it in the morning.’

  ‘Sean has enough to be doing with the vegetables and the hens and God knows what else without setting traps for some poor eejit who’s landed, God help his head, in Dunkerin.’ That shut them up, and she took up her knitting, though she couldn’t stand knitting and had enough Aran scarves to last a lifetime. The boys slipped away, as if she wouldn’t guess they were up to something, and when they came back they were kitted out in deerstalkers and oilskin jackets, and swiping blackthorns all round them. They looked ridiculous and it was only then that she realised they were half cut on the whiskey. They must have woken Mother with all the commotion, because next thing she appeared at the door in her candlewick dressing gown. ‘Lovely night for a walk, lads. The moon’s bursting a gut up there.’

  When the boys had left, Kitty paced forward and back. She hated waiting, hated more than anything being the one who made the tea and waited. But as she peered out into the blackness, she couldn’t bring herself to go outside. She supposed she must hate the dark even more. She closed her eyes and hoped the airman wouldn’t be found, then that he would. She hoped that the likes of Bobby Coyle wouldn’t have one over on him. But then she thought of Belfast and shuddered to think of it.

  She took down a piece of embroidery from on top of the dresser, a cushion cover for Mother’s birthday. She began to work on the petal of a large red gerbera, then threw the bit of cloth away in frustration. Who’d have ever imagined that Kitty Hennessy, the spit of Hedy Lamarr, so sharp she’ll cut herself, would end up like this; stuck in Dunkerin with the rain and Mother and two eejit boys and their blackthorns. If the airman was still around, she wished that she could be the one to find him. She lifted the meat mallet and stood at the door with the lamp off, though she wasn’t sure what she expected to do with it. Catch yourself on, she thought, and she put the mallet down, went into the sitting room and sat in the dark in Mother’s chair.

  They were gone half an hour or so when she heard the rustle in the kitchen. At first, she wasn’t sure. Couldn’t it be a mouse, maybe, or one of the cats come in for its milk? Then, there was a low nobbling sound, the sound of wood rolling on wood. She took off her shoes, and placed them to the side so she wouldn’t trip over them. Then, very quietly, she crept in stockinged feet into the hall. The sound came in short bursts. She could tell that he was struggling with the top drawer of the dresser, the one that always stuck. The plates rattled. She could have told him there was nothing worth having in there, just bills. Then, a sound she couldn’t place. A rubbing, sawing sound. She closed her eyes to hear better. Water now, rushing fast and loud. The sound hollowed out as the water was contained in something. She crossed the hallway, avoiding the one board that squeaked, until she was just outside the cloakroom that led into the kitchen itself.

>   She was close enough to hear him breathe. She could hear the voices of the boys again now, coming from the direction of the blackberry hedge. She opened her mouth to rehearse silently a scream, should she need it, and reached her hand in for the flashlight where it hung on its hook inside the cloakroom door. His footsteps into the pantry sounded confident; he seemed to know his way. How often had he been there without her knowing, leaving traces even she hadn’t noticed? Had she brushed his fingerprints from a loaf of bread before cutting into it, had his lips tasted honey from her spoon? She heard Desmond’s voice, then Bobby’s. Then the man’s footsteps again, back in the kitchen. He was nearer now. For a moment she hesitated, no more that.

  Then, she lit him with her lamp. Using both hands, she managed to keep the beam steady but her guts were a tangle of fear and excitement and inexplicable hope. She caught him side on. She could see his hands and there was no gun or knife or anything like that. In fact, he looked like he was trying to sink into the wall, stretched flat as a pancake against it, shoulders high, leaning out of the light. Outside, footsteps crunched on the gravel. He raised a finger to his lips. She opened her mouth to alert the boys, breathed in sharp, then shut it again.

  She moved the beam of the flashlight an inch until she’d haloed his head. Again he slid free from it and again she followed him. He lay still against the wall. Then, suddenly, he turned his face into the light. There was sky in his eyes, bluer than the bluest day over Dunkerin Bay. There was a kind of a spring-day excitement in her stomach. Then, she noticed the scarf around his neck. It was a pale primrose colour. Not the kind of colour you’d ever see here on a man. It didn’t strike her as a fighting kind of a colour at all. She almost laughed when she saw that yellow scarf, and maybe a smile slipped out, because his shoulders seemed to relax a bit when he saw she wasn’t about to scream. She wondered, then, whether she should open her lungs at all. In the distance, the boys’ laughter rang out. He glanced nervously over his shoulder. She jerked her head towards the door. ‘That pair of eejits? Don’t worry your head about them.’